Re: At What Age Introduce Kids To Computers?

jaqian writes:

At what age would you introduce your child to computers?

Hmm, birth?

I've a son who will be 2yrs this July and he's started noticing the
keyboard and "daddy" typing on it and wants to have a go. I let him bash
away on a broken laptop or a spare keyboard I have lying around. But I
was wondering from what age should I properly introduce him to computers
and what games/software etc would you recommend?

Anyone tackled this already, love to hear your experiences.

My son's almost 2y4m. Things he enjoys now and has done for a few months
include typing into a word-processing application (including typing key
bits of thank you letters, from my letter-by-letter dictation, recently -
he learned all his letters very early from http://www.starfall.com , which
he loves - started on the ABC page and has gone on to the books and phonics
games more recently); the "official" websites of his favourite commercial
story characters (google for your son's, they basically each have a website
with games etc.); various counting games (again, googling finds lots).
Don't have his bookmark list to hand, so sorry no more precise links. And
of course general computer-stuff: logging in with his own username and
password (big achievement the first time he did that unaided!), starting up
the browser, choosing entries from his bookmark menu, shutting windows down
by clicking on the X, etc.

For quite a while he couldn't use the trackpad on the laptop (which is what
he usually uses, since it's the computer I'm usually trying to work on :-)
and used to point to the place on the screen where he wanted to move to and
I'd have to move the pointer for him. Quite suddenly he "got it", and can
now use trackpad and (ordinary adult) mouse fluently. Still has trouble
with click-dragging on the laptop, which requires a thumb holding the
button down and a finger on the trackpad. The laptop has a very light and
rather delicate-feeling keyboard, but I've been impressed at how fast he's
learned to treat it gently.

Had an interesting conversation with a friend recently about whether it's a
bad idea to let him type young; if he can easily get words down by typing
in a few years' time, will he find it too frustrating to have to learn to
write by hand? I ended up feeling that this isn't a good enough reason to
discourage keyboard use, though it may be a good enough reason to remember
to encourage writing play too, especially later on. (Colin is at the stage
of saying he's writing sometimes, which I encourage, but doesn't yet
produce recognisable letters except O.) Worth thinking about though.

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

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